{"id":48,"date":"2015-04-21T21:12:24","date_gmt":"2015-04-21T21:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/?p=48"},"modified":"2015-04-21T21:19:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-21T21:19:24","slug":"a-very-mindful-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/2015\/04\/21\/a-very-mindful-journey\/","title":{"rendered":"A Very Mindful Journey…"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Mindful<\/a>My experience this year with the Cohort 21 gang has been an incredible learning opportunity. I met a bunch of wonderfully talented educators from the CIS family, and learned a ton about different digital tools to use both personally and professionally.\u00a0 I was also encouraged to develop and implement an action plan about a very important (and sometimes overlooked) 21st<\/sup> century skill called mindfulness.<\/p>\n

The goal of my action plan was to teach the fundamentals of mindfulness to my Grade 3 students, providing them with tools they could use to increase their focus and concentration, find a sense of calm, relieve stress or anxiety, and improve their impulse control.<\/p>\n

My investigation into mindfulness in the classroom was successful in a number of ways. Most importantly, my students actually practiced mindfulness and used mindful language! Not every day, and not every student, but there were some very mindful moments throughout the year. Learning about mindfulness has also been incredibly valuable on both a personal and professional level. I hope to use it with increased frequency and skill in the future, as well as share it with others when the opportunity comes along.<\/p>\n

As with any new classroom initiative, there were also a few challenges along the way. There were times when I had planned a mindfulness lesson, but the timing just wasn’t right (i.e. having indoor recess followed by jello for dessert does not create the ideal conditions to Zen out with a bunch of 8-year-olds!) That being said, most of the time we were able to wiggle the sillies out and enjoy 15 minutes of mindfulness. The other major challenge was not only finding the time in our busy schedule to teach the lessons, but also time to reinforce and practice the skills that we had learned.<\/p>\n

Overall, I would consider this adventure to be a great success. If I were to do it again, I would be more explicit in scheduling time to teach the lessons, allowing for longer reflections and discussions. I would also like to incorporate some brain science into the lessons, possibly looking at the Mind Up curriculum for some guidance. It would also be helpful to make the vocabulary and skills more visible by posting key words and strategies on the walls of the classroom.<\/p>\n

Take a look at this prezi<\/a> for more information on mindfulness and how to teach it in the classroom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My experience this year with the Cohort 21 gang has been an incredible learning opportunity. I met a bunch of wonderfully talented educators from the CIS family, and learned a ton about different digital tools to use both personally and … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":74,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-48","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-action-plan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/74"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cohort21.com\/dannyneville\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}